HELLO AND WELCOME! Before you can post your question, you'll have to register -- it's completely free and registered users see less advertising! If you just want to browse through the existing questions, just select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. Otherwise, click here to register!. We highly recommend that you print a copy of our Guide for New Members. Enjoy!

Re:Suse on an old machine

Intel CPU is marked 90 Mhz, but it tests at 99/100, depending upon which program I test it on. RAM is 128 MgBytes, max this machine will hold. Tried to upgrade processor, but no go, stuck right where it's at. If you guys can point me to a linux that will work on this machine, I sure would appriciate it.
Thanks.

Re:Suse on an old machine

Since you're obviously using older hardware, you might as well go with a 2.2.x kernel, since you won't need all the advanced features/modules of the later(2.4.x) kernels, nor the bloat.

Debian(http://www.debian.org) stable(Potato), testing(Woody), and unstable(Sid) all start with a 2.2.x kernel and can be installed to a 386/16 meg ram machine without too many problems. Woody is quite mature now, and the packages for it are rock solid.
Don't expect to have your hand held as much for the install as you would with Suse, Redhat, or Mandrake though. Debian's documentation is suberb - use it to your advantage.

Since you do have a more than decent amount of ram, XFree86 should run ok with a light window manager like black/fluxbox, or one of the other lightweights - by lightweight I don't mean light on features, I mean light on resource usage. Still, don't expect to win any speed contests.

You've got yourself a really decent startup/learning machine there. If you concentrate more on command line features, you'll make the most of what you've got that way.

Re:Suse on an old machine

Slackware should run fine on your laptop. As i've mentioned elsewhere on the forums, I've got a P150mhz Laptop with 32megs of ram, running Slackware 8, Fluxbox, Opera, Sylpheed, etc. And it runs mighty quick considering.

My recommendation would be to use the 2.2.x kernel as mentioned above. If you install Slackware 8 instead of Slackware 8.1 you have the option to pick 2.2.19 instead of 2.4.5. Also I'd recommend on doing a bare minimum install, to guarantee no bloat, and install additional packages when needed. Rather then doing an installation of extra packages you "think" you might need in the future.

As far as minimum requirements for slackware goes, I quote from their site

Re:Suse on an old machine

Thanks for all the help guys, I think I have enough info now to get started. btw, it's not a laptop that I have, when I said old machine, I ment OLD MACHINE !!! LOL! It's a desktop, circa 1995, AT&T Globalyst 600. It's my first computer, given to me by a friend last December. I've been messing around inside it and have learned quite alot in the last 7 1/2 months, and I think I'm ready to make the next step and go Linux. The more I learn, the more I don't like Microsoft. Again, thanks for all the help.